Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

Self-Accountability Part 4

Self-Accountability Part 4

Step Two: Be Honest With Yourself

Self-accountability is meaningless without honesty. It can be difficult to be honest with yourself, because then you’re pulling away all the excuses and rationalization that stand between you and what you want, but it’s the only way forward.

This is a two-part process, the first part of which is simply putting your ego aside and realize that you don’t know everything. No one does, and it might be a tough pill to swallow, but you aren’t the exception. Having the courage to admit that you don’t know everything opens the door to the second part of this process: asking for help.

I can speak personally about this, having spent around twenty years in my career thinking I knew everything and struggling all along the way.

              If you want to spend your career making every single mistake possible, at the end of your career you could be the wisest and most experienced person in your field. You also spent decades learning and likely re-learning the same mistakes over and over again.

              If you’re able to have a little humility and ask for help from people who have been where you are, you’ll find your growth will explode. Instead of a decade struggling on XYZ, you can find a veteran who can cut literally years off of your learning curve with a few sentences.

              The old phrase about touching a hot stove isn’t really how the world works. In reality, there’s about 90% of people who have touched the stove once, keep touching it and constantly wonder why their hands hurt so much. Then there’s 9% who touch it once, and realize “that was a terrible idea” and don’t touch it again.

Finally, we have the 1% who see everyone else cursing at the stove, holding their hands and have the courage to ask someone if they should touch the stove while everyone else gets burned.

When you compound all of the time that asking for help can get you, it’s almost unbelievable how much faster you can develop than your peers. There’s no reward for re-inventing the wheel, and the vast majority of problems you’ll face in your career are similar to problems other people have faced.

The best thing about asking others for help is they’ve already done the work, burned their hands and as long as you ask politely, you get the answers to the test.

Now that we’re taking the fast lane towards success, let’s talk about the final step in becoming more self-accountable.

Continued…

Filed Under: Articles, on Maintenance Reliability, ReliabilityXperience

About Joe Anderson

George has a MS in Reliability Engineering from Monash University, is a CMRP, and CRL. George has over 25 years of experience in the Life Sciences industry and food manufacturing. He is a CRL, CMRP, a Black Belt in Reliability, Uptime Award Winner and a CMRP of the Year recipient. He is a well recognized thought leader, change agent, speaker and teacher within the industry. He also teaches courses in Maintenance Management and Planning & Scheduling at the University of Wisconsin.

« Reactive Chemical Hazards
Are Condition Assessments Needed? »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Videos and Articles by George Williams



and by Joe Anderson

in the ReliabilityXperience series

Recent Posts

  • test
  • test
  • test
  • Your Most Important Business Equation
  • Your Suppliers Can Be a Risk to Your Project

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy